Contents tagged with UN peacekeeping mission

President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, said that Ukraine is ready to increase its share in the UN peacekeeping forces in order to allow sending peacekeepers to the Donbas, as he indicated at a joint briefing with Austrian President, Alexander Van der Bellen.

"We have discussed with the President [of Austria] the situation in the occupied Donbas, and the Austrian President assured Vienna’s readiness to adequately contribute to the deployment of the United Nations peacekeeping mission under …

Deutsche Welle reports that former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has claimed that the introduction of a full-fledged peacekeeping mission in the Donbas would contribute to the implementation of the Minsk agreements.

"I believe that the peacekeeping mission would become a mechanism for the implementation of the Minsk agreements," he said.

In the meantime, according to Rasmussen, "there is no progress at all." He believes that the reason for this is precisely the absence of a …

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin has claimed that Finnish Foreign Minister Timo Soini told him that Finland is ready to participate in a UN peacekeeping mission, in the case of its introduction to the Donbas.

"Our Finnish friends are essentially ready to participate in the upcoming peacekeeping operation, but now they have to put pressure on Russia so that it would be a real peacekeeping operation, not an operation to allow Russia legitimizing its protectorate in the occupied …

If an agreement is reached concerning a peacekeeping operation in Ukraine under the aegis of the UN, Finland should take part in it, as stated by the President of Finland, Sauli Niinistö, at the Munich Security Conference, Yle reports.

"This is one of the most serious problems in Europe, that is why if there is even a small opportunity to resolve the crisis, Finland should take part in the settlement of this crisis," he stated at a meeting with Finnish journalists in Munich. At the same tine …

The plan for a settlement of the situation in the Donbas, prepared at the request of former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, will not work without the agreement with the authorities of the self-proclaimed DPR and LPR, says Aleksey Pushkov, Chair of the Russian State Duma's Committee for International Affairs. The document implies sending 20,000 soldiers from the UN contingent to eastern Ukraine.

In an interview with Deutsche Welle on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, …

The draft resolution on the international peacekeeping mission in the Donbas proposed by Russia is unacceptable to the US and the UN, US Special Representative for Ukraine Kurt Volker told ‘112 Ukraine’ TV channel in an interview.Volker noted that Moscow proposed that the peacekeepers be deployed only on the demarcation line, to ensure the safety of OSCE observers.

Russia does not agree to give the mission the right to control the Ukrainian-Russian border.

The UN Security Council was ready to begin deployment of UN peacekeepers in Donbas, but Russia rejected virtually all important provisions, as stated by Volodymyr Yelchenko, the permanent representative of Ukraine in the United Nations, in an interview with Yevropeyskaya Pravda.

“The Security Council was ready to begin work on the mandate of the peacekeeping operation, but Russia rejected virtually all important provisions and returned to its idea of a strange operation where UN peacekeepers …

There are three options for the deployment of the UN peacekeeping mission in the Donbass, said Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski in an interview with Polish media, Ukrinform reports. In contrast, the Russian Federation insists that there should not be any NATO countries participating in the mission and that the leadership of the separatist-held territories must become a subject of dialogue, to which many countries cannot agree, Poland included.

The main difficulty in working to resolve the crisis in Donbas is that Russia continues to deny its role in the fighting, stated Kurt Volker, the U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations, as reported by Voice of America.

“Russia is continuing to deny its own role in this and that it has nothing to do with the separatist governments that it has set up, and that it changes the leaders at will as they did in Luhansk just last month,” Volker said.